The School on Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute

field by the barn, and also leading to the clothesline and its mowed rectangle. The clipped grass is stiff and prickly to Erika’s bare feet. The lines droop with laundry, including sheets that have cartoon prints. Erika wears shorts. Legs pudgy, shaved, but not tanned. V-neck T-shirt, dark blue. Kids’ bikes in the tall grass. A wheelbarrow full of water. Wildflowers. Bees. Erika squints. The visitors squint. Only Patti wears sunglasses, eyes wide and roving.
    â€œHow’s the baby doing?” she asks cautiously. Patti always asks a lot of questions, which she appears to have no intention of hearing the answers to, but will look around at furnishings and floors as if guessing their value. She has always done this. Long before she was in home and commercial real estate. And there’s her nonaccent accent, cultivated since high school. A few years ago, that generic accent made Patti seem peculiar. Now, today, she’s among millions.
    â€œNot very well,” Erika tells her.
    From the open windows there come rustlings and rumblings, a slam, the sound of ice in a glass,
pop pop pop pop pop
. . . a giggle . . . a
whooooosh
and, of course, the multiple TVs’ tinny tweedles and little roars. The restless house breathes.
    Erika picks a wet sock from the basket, pins it to the line, reaches for another.
    The gifts wrapped in such summery paper and the casserole remain unoffered in the visitors’ hands, spelling out that these are offerings for passage
into the house
.
    Erika glances again at the two strangers, then goes for another sock. All three visitors are dressed like their gifts, pastel and summery. Nan is white-haired, fiftyish. Sass is young.
    Patti asks, “Can we see him when you’re done with your wash, Erika?”
    â€œWell . . . yes . . . but he won’t be friendly. He’s not even eating.”
    Patti glances at the faces of her friends; behind her sunglasses, her eyes are just two meaningful gleams.
    â€œSo very sad,” says white-haired Nan. “I’m truly sorry.”
    Erika turns and looks at her, a blinking single nod.
    Patti tells on her sister. “They’ve decided to refuse treatment.”
    â€œYes,” says the white-haired woman, which means this has already been discussed prior to their arrival.
    Patti says, “They just decided to hope for the best.”
    Erika feels for a twisted pink pajama top.
    Patti says, “They are not Christian Scientists. That’s not it. They are just—” She cuts herself off, meaningfully. Her eyes are on her sister’s back, the oversized navy T-shirt, pudgy shoulders, the bra line cutting into the extra pudginess of her back. “They have just decided to let him go.”
    Erika says nothing. She fetches another pastel sock and a handful of washcloths.
    â€œYou mentioned before that they don’t have insurance,” the young Sass offers quickly. The armholes of her dress are cut deep into the shoulders and her arms are tanned and shapely. Not a churchy dress. Her hair is in a blonde Pebbles do. Not churchy hair.
    Patti replies, “Well, yes.”
    Sass says, “With the way things are these days, seems most people don’t have insurance.”
    â€œIt’s nothing to be ashamed of,” says the white-haired Nan kindly. “My daughter doesn’t have health insurance either.”
    The young Sass nods energetically.
    This conversation: third person all the way, like Erika isn’t around. But, after all, she is keeping her back to them, isn’t she?
    Patti looks at the house. Her eyes sweep over to the Lockes’ car, parked near the kitchen door. “Where is Donald, not at work?”
    Erika says, “Tuesdays he’s nights.”
    Patti’s sunglasses turn toward her friends. “The hospital would treat him whether they have insurance or not. They wouldn’t turn a child away. I called them myself and they said Erika and Donald only